In a move that will make it easier
for agencies to plan, buy, and perhaps most importantly, process new and
emerging digital radio advertising platforms, Madison Avenue now has a standard
format for coding HD and streaming radio stations it its media-buying
systems.
The breakthrough, announced on Wednesday by Donovan Data
Systems, resolves a key impediment for the rapidly-growing digital radio
segment, which forced many agencies to develop their own ad-hoc approaches, or
bypass the medium altogether.
While the digital radio situation may not
seem as significant as the digital broadcast TV transition that occurred a
couple of years ago, in some ways it is much worse, according to Donovan Chief
Media Strategist Harvey Kent, because the TV transition was mandated by the
Federal Communications Commission and the industry had time to plan and adopt
new protocols and procedures for dealing with digital TV stations before they
emerged, whereas digital radio options have simply emerged as part of grassroots
technological developments and rapid consumer adoption.
In fact, he
says, it's often difficult to even label and categorize some of the new digital
radio options, including one of the biggest, Pandora, which still isn't covered
by the new data-processing solution, because it is neither an HD radio station
nor a streaming service.
Nonetheless, he says the new digital radio
station formatting "schema" will at least get hundreds and potentially thousands
of new digital stations and streaming services into the same data-processing,
planning, buying, "posting," and bill paying systems that all the other major
media use, including Donovan's, rival Mediabank, which has agreed to merge with
Donovan into a new company called MediaOcean pending regulatory approval,
Strata, and Katz.
Those latter two agreements are significant for the
radio industry, he says, because Comcast-owned Strata is the major software and
systems provider used by agencies and stations to process media-buying
"proposals," and station sales rep Katz is a major provider of the actual
invoices that execute those buys.
The big breakthrough, Kent says, was
essentially to standardize the "call letters" of digital radio stations and
streaming services so that they could be easily inputted and trafficked
throughout the myriad of planning, buying and processing systems used by
agencies to buy radio and other media.
Importantly, Kent says the schema
will also enable agencies to immediately access audience estimates for the
digital radio outlets from Arbitron and various streaming radio audience
measurement firms that now compete with the radio ratings giant, which itself is
claiming some new improvements in the measurement of the medium.
Kent
says it may be difficult to project what the economic impact of the breakthrough
is for radio ad spending, because digital is a growing factor for the industry,
but he said it removes a major obstacle, and it also reduces the "workflow"
associated with agencies planning and buying digital radio.
"I think it
will have a major impact," he speculates, because, "before, unless an HD station
was put on a 'must-buy' list, it probably didn't get on the
plan."
Source: Media Daily News